Welcome back to The Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Sarah Teesdale. I've read one of her poems before on this show. She lived from

1884 to 1933 and was an American lyric poet from Missouri.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Barter. It goes like this.

Life has loveliness to sell. All beautiful and splendid things.

Blue waves whitened on a cliff. Soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up,

holding wonder, like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, music like a curve of gold,

scent of pine trees in the rain, eyes that love you, arms that hold, and for your spirits

still delight, holy thoughts

that star the night. Spend all you have for loveliness. Buy it and never count the cost. For one

white singing hour of peace, count many a year of strife well lost, and a breath of ecstasy give all you have been or could be.

Sarah Teesdale does a lovely job maintaining the focus on her extended metaphor here,

the extended metaphor of selling and bartering, that life itself has something to sell to us or

to barter with us. Of course, bartering and selling is a transaction. So not only does life

have loveliness to sell, which of course she tells us three times in the beginning of each of the

three stanzas, but also it's going to expect something in return. So as we read this poem, you know, the implication is that somewhere along

the way, the poet is going to reveal to us what it is that we have to offer back. And the

interesting thing is, it's not that specific. So the first two stanzas, talk about all the loveliness.

And then what is that we have to give back?

The beginning of stanza three tells us that it's everything.

Spend all you have for loveliness.

Buy it and never count the cost.

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